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Monday, May 01, 2017

Development Is About People Not Economies

Last week I was invited to what was described as a
“Global Think In” event, basically a series of conversations between academics
on Columbia University’s New York campus and scholars and participants in nine
Columbia Global Centers in cities around the world. The question we were asked
to ponder was: What issue relating to the changing world do you find most
urgently pressing in your region?

Now the world is changing in many, quite drastic ways which
pose serious challenges to people in Kenya and on the African continent. These
include the perils of climate change as evidenced by the current drought
ravaging the continent. The twin march of globalization and technology is both
creating and decimating opportunities, jobs and wealth, and enabling small
groups of disenchanted folks to terrorize entire nations. At the same time we
must fight both newly emerging and more familiar diseases as a consequence of
changing lifestyles, and figure out how to prepare our kids to deal with an
uncertain future.

To do any of this effectively, we will need governments that
are focused on and responsive to the welfare of their citizens as well as able
to cooperate to address the wider, global issues.

Yet across the world, we are witnessing a retreat from these
very values. While some may point to the rising tide of populism and xenophobic
nationalism with the preference for “strong” leaders as represented by the
election of Donald Trump in the US and the rise of far right in Europe, I think
something more insidious is at play.

“My personal preference leans toward a liberal dictatorship
rather than toward a democratic government devoid of liberalism,” Friedrich
Hayek once remarked on a visit to Pinochet's Chile. Today many seem to lean
simply towards economically astute dictatorship in the belief that democracy,
especially of the liberal kind, has not only not worked, but actually militates
against the ability to solve problems. The role models for this are regimes in
China, Rwanda and Ethiopia, which foster high rates of economic growth while
curtailing political freedoms and human rights.

Yet this privileging of economic numbers above people only
produces chronically fragile states. Ethiopia, which has been growing at double
digits for well over a decade, has been under a state of emergency since
October sparked by protests over repression. Many here forget that the 2008
post-election violence which pushed Kenya to the brink of anarchy, came after
the longest period of sustained economic growth in twenty years.

Economic growth is no panacea. It is no substitute for the
real work of ensuring governments are rooted in and accountable to the people
they rule over. And as the recent party nominations across the country
demonstrate, Kenya has done little to ensure that political processes are an
unambiguous reflection of the will of the citizenry.

Another thing to consider is that since the end of the Cold
War, the international community has served as a critical check on governmental
excesses in Kenya and the region and has been an important ally of those
fighting for greater respect for human and democratic rights as well as better
governance. The International Criminal Court, for example, was a big factor in
tempering politicians’ appetites for violence and why we did not have a repeat
the 2008 violence in 2013.

As Kenya gears up for another round of elections, the ICC’s
stature has been badly damaged the Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto cases and is
now seen as little more than a paper tiger. Further, the rise of inward looking
populists such as Trump means our governing elites will also be less concerned
about international reactions to human rights violations and stolen elections.
The fragmentation of the global liberal order and the growing international
power and prestige of illiberal states such as China as well as the preference
for transactional foreign policies that elide human rights and governance
concerns means brutal and corrupt regimes here have little fear of
international delegitimization and ostracism.

Given all this, there is thus a pressing challenge to
recreate the coalitions of both citizens and international allies necessary to
hold the political class in check during the elections and to deliver real
reform in the post-election phase. We also need to build new development models, ones that recognize development is about people, not economies.